7th Ohio Infantry | Spared & Shared 23

The following two letters were written by Arthur (“Art”) Tappan Wilcox (1834-1902), the son of Capt. Franklin Wilcox (1797-1867) and Julia Ann Wilcox (1802-1859) of Lorain county, Ohio. He wrote the letter to his older brother, Lucien (“Lute”) Henry Wilcox (1830-1880).

Art was living in Sandusky, Ohio, at the time of the 1860 US Census. In 1861 he graduated from the law school at the University of Michigan and married Julia Morehouse soon after. That same year he enlisted into military service and was elected 2nd Lieutenant of the 7th Ohio Volunteer Infantry (OVI), Co. E. He was promoted to Captain of Co. D for bravery and meritorious service. He participated in these battles: Cross Lanes, Virginia, where he was captured by the enemy and confined to various prisons; Dumfries, Virginia; Chancellorsville, Virginia; Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, Tennessee; and several battles in the state of Georgia. He mustered out of the 7th OVI on July 6, 1864. Soon, he reenlisted and became Colonel of the 177th OVI. On June 24, 1865, Colonel Wilcox was mustered out with regiment at Greensboro, North Carolina.

After the war was over, Wilcox resumed his work as a civil engineer. He worked on the construction of railroads, including the Union Pacific and the Canada Southern. A publication of the University of Michigan Alumni Association reports that Arthur Tappan Wilcox contracted yellow fever while working on bridges in Central America. He died of the disease at Port Limon, Costa Rica, on October 24, 1902. A biographical sketch of Arthur T. Wilcox which appeared in the book Itinerary of the Seventh Ohio Volunteer Infantry, 1861-1864 closed with this statement about Colonel Wilcox: “He was a zealous officer and a brave man.” [Source: Sandusky History]

[Note: These letters are from the private collection of Brent Reidenbach and were transcribed and published on Spared & Shared by express consent.]

Letter 1

Camp Dumfries, Virginia
January 7th 1863

Dear Lute,

I have a little matter of business I wish you would attend to for me as I suppose you can do so easier than Mr. Wilbor. I wrote to him soon after sending my money to send $161.25 to Mr. Ralph Plumb of Oberlin for Capt. Shurtleff. Today I had a letter from Capt. Shurtleff saying that he had been advised by Mr. Samuel Plumb that the money had never been received. I ought to have directed the money sent to Samuel Plumb but still that should make no difference as all packages coming to Ralph Plumb are opened by him. They are brothers but Ralph is away in the army somewhere. Shurtleff’s solution is this—“The express agent at Oberlin is an old scamp & has probably stolen it.”

Mr. Wilbor has undoubtedly a receipt from the Express Co. & I wish you would get it and look into the matter. The sum is rather too large to lose—especially when it costs so much to live as it does here in the army. If necessary, go down to Oberlin & see Mr. Plumb and I will pay expenses.

We are still lying here quietly & I hope may remain so. The weather yesterday was decidedly rainy looking but has cleared off cold and we are feeling quite a touch of winter. Ed wrote to me sometime to try & get Gen. [Orlando B.] Willcox’s endorsement to a recommendation for his promotion. I wrote to Shurtleff & he says Gen. Willcox endorsed it without hesitation so you can tell him when you write to him.

*Capt. Giles Waldo Shurtleff, Co. C, 7th OVI (OberlinCollege Archives)*

Shurtleff thinks they had a warm time at Fredericksburg but says the horror of the fight was nothing compared to the suspense of lying with 50,000 men two days in Fredericksburg directly under the rebel guns, before recrossing, & he cannot conceive why the rebels allowed them to remain undisturbed.

We hear today that Rosecrans has gained a victory & taken Murfreesboro. Heaven grant it may be true. Also that our people are gaining ground at Vicksburg with every prospect of success. May that be true too. We need something to make amends for our want of success in Virginia.

Write to me, you and all the rest. So long as we are quiet you will hear from me quite often. There is a prospect of our staying here some time, unless the Confeds “come down on us” and make us “light out” which would be very uncivil on their part. But still, good as the prospect is of remaining, it don’t need more than half a dozen words from Headquarters to spoil all our great calculations.

I don’t reckon any of us will be sorry when the US brand wears out of our skins. It will be sort of pleasant to own one’s self again, if the property isn’t very valuable.

I must close up. Goodbye. Love to your wife and mine, Lottie and Father and the rest. Remember me to Capt. and Mrs. Parrish. Yours truly, — Art. T.

Letter 2

Camp near Aquia Landing, Virginia
Friday, May 15th 1863

Dear people at home,

George is writing to Clara, & I will put in a line to you though It can be nothing more, as it is already nearly meal time. I should have written again before this, but have been detailed on a Court of Inquiry nearly all the week, to examine into the conduct of a New York Officer charged with cowardice at Chancellorsville. It was a mixed up mess & we only got through last night.

We are all getting rested up & fel in good spirits, despite the non success of our movement south of the Rappahannock. I shouldn’t wonder if Gen. Joe [Hooker] is sorry he didn’t stay the other side of the river—especially since Stoneman’s report has come in. I can’t help thinking that we might have hung on a day or two longer & possibly given the story a better ending, though I will admit that individually, I felt more comfortable on the north side of the river. Our wounded have been mostly brought this side of the river. Our missing boys are not yet accounted for altogether. One of them, Sergt. Allen, we hear from some of the wounded who were paroled, was sent to Richmond as a prisoner, unhurt. The other, Brayton B. Williams, ¹ I can hear nothing of.

Lee Raymond is in Ward I, Armory Square Hospital, Washington D. C. Please inform his mother. [Henry T.] Benton ² is in some hospital there but I have not heard from him.

George says the money I sent got through safe. Write to me somebody. The mail is ready & I must stop. Love to all, — Art

¹ Brayton B. Williams was taken prisoner at Chancellorsville on 3 May 1863 and returned to duty in mid November.

² Henry T. Benton was wounded in the left knee at Chancellorsville on 3 May 1863 and discharged for disability on 7 March 1864.

The author of this letter only signed his name “Will” but he was clearly from an Ohio regiment and since he referred to the “Vienna boys,” my hunch was that he served in Co. H, 7th Ohio Volunteer Infantry (OVI). Checking the rosters for Ohio soldiers named William enlisting from Vienna, I found only one soldier that fit the description—Pvt. William H. Overmire who enlisted for three months in April 1861 in Co. H, 7th OVI and then reenlisted for three years after that 1st organization disbanded. William was wounded and taken prisoner at the Battle of Cedar Mountain, Virginia, on 9 August 1862, and there is no further record of him.

William’s letter includes a description of an incident that took place on the Gauley River on 24 July 1861 when the 11th OVI fired on a transport steamer and sunk it.

*I could not find an image of Will but here is one of Stephen Burrows who also served in Co. H, 7th Ohio Volunteer Infantry (Ancestry.com)*

Transcription

Camp Gauley, Virginia
August 2nd 1861

It was with much pleasure that I received your letter of the 27th. I had just come off picket guard. Six of us (Vienna boys) were stationed about three miles from camp up on the opposite side of the river (we are upon the Gauley River about forty miles from Charleston). We lay under the shade of an apple tree all day. In the evening it rained and we went to a barn which was nearby where we lodged till next morning. During the day we met with a man who had been in the Rebel army but who had gone home on furlough and never returned. He told us he had been forced into the service about three months since. He told us that there had been about two thousand five hundred men in Gen. Wise’s army of which two thousand were Union men and that just this side of Charleston six hundred had deserted the army at one time and that they were continually deserting. Where Gen. Wise is or what he is going to do, we know not, but we have possession of the Kanawha Valley.

We had expected to have had several skirmishes before we reached our present position. We had prepared for a hard battle at Charleston but to our surprise when we reached there, the enemy had gone a few miles down the river. We came across a boat loaded with wheat which was bearing the American flag. Col. [Frizzellof the 11th [Ohio] Regiment placed some of his men in the bushes and they placed a canon upon the bank. He then asked who they were. They answered they were Kanawha Rangers. He asked them what they meant. They said they were northern troops. He asked again if they were Union men and they, thinking that there were but few on shore to oppose them not seeing those in the bushes, answered that they belonged to the Southern Confederacy. The Colonel then ordered to fire. When the cannon opened upon them, striking the furnace and throwing the fire all over the boat, a volley then opened upon them from behind the bushes when they all took to flight, leaving everything—tents, provision, guns, and all to the flames which had already highly spread. They burned another boat themselves above Charleston and marched on. We have pursued them to Gauley Bridge which they burned, the cost of which was $18,000. ¹

We have now settled down for how long, I do not know. We are in a most delightful place, surrounded on all sides by lofty hills which we might call mountains. Upon the top of one of these hills I am now sitting. At my feet is a cool stream of water. I look down upon the camp and them look like pygmies.

Dear mother, you have spoken of my not writing soon while some of the others have written. We marched almost all the way after leaving Ohio. Those who were unable to march went aboard the boat. Many of the boys were unwell. They rode while I kept my health and marched. Thus you see they had abundance of time while I had none. Indeed, I might have found some time to have written, but after marching all day with my knapsack upon my back under the burning sun (for the sun comes down very hot here), a letter of mine should not have been very interesting. Thus is the apparent neglect, and not from a want of feeling for home for never did home appear more dear than now.

As for my wants, I am in want of nothing. Money I have no need of. But I must close as it is past noon and dinner is waiting. I am perfectly well and have been ever since I left home. The boys are all well and we are all in high spirits.

N. B. [Nota bene]—I had commenced writing home about the battle when on the other side of Charleston but before I could finish it, we were ordered to march. I suppose you have heard all about it now. Tell sis I received her letter just before we marched out of Charleston and was very happy to hear from her but was surprised at the question contained in that note. My love to all. May this find you enjoying health and happiness. Yours in filial affection, — Will

N. B.—i have not yet received that paper which Pa and Ben Smith sent. Excuse this letter for the mosquitoes bother me so I can hardly write at all.

¹ This incident is described in A History of the Eleventh Regiment by Horton & Teverbaugh (1866), pp. 30-31, but it varies somewhat in the details. It was Lt. Colonel Frizzell of the 11th OVI that commanded the regiment on 24 July 1861 when on the march to Gauley’s Bridge, they encountered a steamboat loaded with troops crossing the river. “Hailing the boat, the Colonel asked what troops they were, and being answered by the interrogatory if ‘you’uns’ were rebels the Colonel responded, ‘All right—run ‘er up!’ and had not hte hoisting of the Union flag been too hastily ordered by some officer on the hill adjoining, a valuable loss of ammunition, stores and prisoners would have been easily captured. The rebel commander saw the flag, and the boat was put across to the opposite shore with all possible speed. Capt. Cotter soon succeeded in getting his six pounders in position, and a shell sent through the steamer not only greatly hastened the disembarkation of the rebels but set fire to the boat and charred and blackened timbers of the hull of which probably may yet be seen at low water at the foot of the shoals.”